Crime in the Dutch province of North-Brabant

Crime in the Dutch province of North-Brabant

(full text only available in Dutch)

JV 2017, nr. 2

Summary

Various forms of organized crime are concentrated in the Dutch province of North Brabant, bordering Belgium. The various authors in this issue of Justitiële verkenningen seek to clarify this phenomenon. For centuries Brabant was a marginalized province that suffered from war, exploitation by the central government, rural gangs, a lack of law enforcement, extreme poverty as well as from discrimination because of its mainly catholic population. Against this background the population developed a mentality of solving their problems on their own. Their survival strategies implied not only legal activities like agriculture and small scale production,but also smuggling and illegal alcohol production. In more recent times the production of synthetic drugs, growing cannabis and transport criminality became widespread. In one of the articles the culture of marginal neighborhoods is discussed, which is one of the keys to understanding the specifics of the history of Brabant and its partial intertwining with a culture of acting illegally and criminally. Other articles deal with the substantial traveler community in this province, with criminal family networks and with synthetic drug waste dumpings. There is also an article on the displacement of illegal drug markets from The Netherlands to Belgium.